Day 251 - Fire and Baptism

A sermon delivered at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, TN

OT Reading: Jeremiah 23: 23-29

NT Reading: Luke 12:-56

“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! ⁵⁰ I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!”

These two powerful sentences are packed with meaning and positive emotion that go to the core of Good News, but they are often are negatively as if Jesus is saying He came to consume the sinner with fire rather than purify with God’s grace.

In the nine chapters, between the end of Chapter 9 to the middle of 19, Luke recounts the final journey of Jesus to Jerusalem. It begins in Luke 9:51, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  Jesus has finished his ministry in Galilee and left on the long trek to Jerusalem where he knows his crucifixion awaits. His face is set; his focus is on the cross. Jesus must have shouted these words to the crowd. What does he mean when he says with the emotional intensity, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled?”

He uses the entire time in this journey through Samaria and Judea to convey his teachings to the people he meets along the way. He teaches about prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, his mission teachings, the importance of being watchful and settling debts with your accusers, the parables of the mustard seed, the narrow door, the cost of discipleship, the lost sheep, the good Samaritan, the rich man and Lazarus, and several miracles and his proclaims woe to the Pharisees.

Now, only a third of the way on the journey, Jesus utters these two sentences, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! ⁵⁰I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” He would not be human if the proximity of death did not weigh on him heavily. Every day, he must have awakened to crowds knowing how close is the end…so much to do and so little time.

We so want to read the anger of God in the Old Testament into Jesus, that He will consume and consign the sinner to the fires of perdition as we recall.

It happened in the Reformation and in even in early America. Protestants burned other believers at the stake as punishment for deviating from their understanding of Scripture or for suspicion of being evil witches. In the Spanish Inquisition people were torn limb from limb, or otherwise tortured to death for suspected errant belief. There are certainly instances in  the Old Testament where one sees the Lord threaten the fire of consuming retribution due to the His anger, but gratefully most often the Lord’s fire purifies or promises purification.

It is just not a constructive or fair to Jesus to think He will burn up sinners. We are all sinners; he would have to burn us all up. Jesus came into the world to wipe away, to expunge sin by his forgiveness and atonement. Retribution is not the purpose of Jesus, after all, isn’t the end of his journey the victory over retribution? Retribution and judgment are different things. We are judged by our faith.

So what does Jesus mean, “I came to bring fire to the earth?” He means He is bringing the fire of the Holy Spirit to purify God’s beloved people using the analogy of refining or purifying metal by fire found in the Old Testament. I was a metallurgist (oldest engineering discipline) and it is illuminating to know how the people of the ancient Near East produced copper and silver from ores. Copper, lead and silver occur together as sulfide ores along with their oxides. The sulfur and oxygen must be removed and separating each metal separated to make each metal malleable and valuable.  Ancient metallurgists would add lead to copper ores to dissolve the gold and silver impurities and then blow air through the molten metal to oxidize (burn) the lead away preferentially leaving the pure copper behind. Copper would be melted and charcoal added to burn out the oxygen. Silver ores, and the silver-laden lead slag from refining copper would be burned repeatedly in a purifying fire and more air that preferentially oxidized the lead leaving the refined silver. This process might be repeated several times to increase the metal quality.

In fact, the ideal house of artisans in these times had a courtyard with a large earthen oven with two stoves. One stove was used to purify metal this way, the other to cook bread. To put this expression of Jesus into context, here are most of the Old Testament references to the Lord’s purifying fire:

In Job 28:1-5: “Surely there is a mine for silver, and a place for gold to be refined. ²Iron is taken out of the earth, and copper is smelted from ore. ⁵As for the earth, out of it comes bread; but underneath it is turned up as by fire. (ADAM)

Psalms. 12: (5-7): ⁵“Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now rise up,” says the LORD; “I will place them in the safety for which they long.” ⁶The promises of the LORD are promises that are pure (as) silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.

In key passage God describes to Jeremiah how Assyria will ravage Israel:

Jer.6:27-29  “²⁷I have made you (Assyria) a tester and a refiner among my people so that you may know and test their ways.  ²⁸They are all stubbornly rebellious, going about with slanders; they are bronze and iron, all of them act corruptly.  ²⁹The bellows blow fiercely, the lead is consumed by the fire; in vain the refining goes on, for the wicked are not removed. ³⁰They are called “rejected silver,” for the LORD has rejected them.”

Daniel 11:35 talks about the end times: “Some of the wise shall fall, so that they may be refined, purified, and cleansed, until the time of the end, for there is still an interval until the time appointed.”

Zech. 13:9 talks about the remnant of Israel that the Lord saves: “And I will put this third into the fire, refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The LORD is our God.’”

Malachi 3:2-3 is a well-known verse: “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; ³he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness.”

But our purification is his baptism on the Cross. Imagine the constant turmoil of misery on his journey. People of all sorts beset Jesus, the poor, the hungry, the prisoners, the lame and cripple, the hypocrites and pompous authorities. Jesus has said the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head while his end weighs heavily on his mind. It is inescapable that the humanity of Jesus is telling the crowd he is ready for our purification to begin. He is ready for his baptism on the cross when the Kingdom of God fully breaks into the world, taking it like a storm. This is a lament or maybe a proclamation that says, “People get ready! Let’s get this thing started.”

And Jesus continues, “⁵¹Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! ⁵²From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; ⁵³they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

This is where people get the idea we are to actively persecute evil But is Jesus encouraging us to foment discord, violence and strife to the world? The answer is NO! That flies in the face of his compassion (Luke 6:20), “Then he looked up at his disciples and said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.’” Jesus is saying is that the actions of the purified who believe will reveal their faith, and they will be tested and excluded by the world, not by the Lord. The voice of the Old Testament leaps out of these words of Jesus to the unfaithful in the crowd:

Jer. 9:4-9, 16,25-26  ⁴Beware of your neighbors, and put no trust in any of your kin; for all your kin are supplanters, and every neighbor goes around like a slanderer. ⁵and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongues to speak lies; they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent. ⁶Oppression upon oppression, deceit upon deceit! They refuse to know me, says the LORD. ⁷Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts: I will now refine and test them, for what else can I do with my sinful people? ¹⁶I will scatter them among nations that neither they nor their ancestors have known; and I will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them (the unrighteous). ²⁵The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will attend to all those who are circumcised only in the foreskin. ²⁶Egypt, Judah, Edom, the Ammonites, Moab, and all those with shaven temples who live in the desert. For all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.

The Lord is not bringing a fire to consume us and scatter us as he did to the Jews with Assyria. The fire of the Holy Spirit will bring us together under his wing with reconciled hearts.

Listen to Isaiah 48:9-10 where God’s anger turned towards compassion of his covenant: “⁹For my name’s sake I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, so that I may not cut you off. ¹⁰See, I have refined you, but not like silver; I have tested you in the furnace of adversity.”

Jesus is saying let our hearts reveal our faith that I have purified you and given you God’s grace. However, this faith has consequences for us. The faithful will not let an angry heart betray an outwardly visible but false piety, rather they live according to a loving, faithful heart. This trial of fire we face is not retribution but the consequence that separates the faithful from the unfaithful.

 The baptism that Jesus sees for himself in this passage is the cross. The baptism we face is the criticism and contempt of the world and perhaps even of our own families for standing true to our faith in God. This is the meaning of the warning purification or justification by the Holy Spirit calls us to be our true selves, set apart.

And then Jesus warns the crowds, ⁵⁴…“When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. ⁵⁵And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. ⁵⁶You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

In other words, Jesus says the Kingdom of God is at hand. If you can look at the sky and see that it is going to rain or be scorching hot, woe to you if you cannot read the times and see what I am doing and hear what I say.

recap: Jesus has spoken to the people from his human heart. He is painfully aware and probably fearful of his future but his perfect righteousness knows what must be done and his perfect love desires its completion for the sake of all humanity. Jesus is says, “Let it begin now! Woe to you who cannot see the time is here.”

I remind you of the words of John the Baptist in Luke 3:16: John answered and said to them all, “As for me, I baptize you with water; but One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to untie the thong of His sandals ; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

So now we can see that Jesus tells us, “We are all impure and marked by sin. The gift of God’s grace will purify us, and leave the wheat and silver. In God’s refining fire only the chaff and lead burn. He will refine the faithful leaving them fire-polished for the world to see. But my friends, while you are justified to rejoice in this good gift, know that your heart will reveal your faith. Then, your faith will mark you and make you beloved and reviled by the world. Those who revile you for my sake should use their eyes to read the time as they can read the sky.  If the world loves you, you ought to think twice and look at the sky.

And if we read just 3 verses further in Luke, Jesus says, “⁵⁸Thus, when you go with your accuser before a magistrate, on the way make an effort to settle the case, or you may be dragged before the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you in prison.  ⁵⁹I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny.”

Jesus is saying the kingdom of God is at hand. Be watchful and do not wait for judgment to come to you unexpected to reveal the quality of your faith, reveal your faith now by your actions.